


Mixed Apologies

by KoYue



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Apologies, Confessions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, First Kiss, Headcanon, Spoilers for Episode: s10e12 The Doctor Falls, Spoilers for Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:33:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23405338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KoYue/pseuds/KoYue
Summary: The Doctor crash lands in a strange garden and meets the former face of her best enemy. Missy gives some perspective to her past actions and learns the truth about the Doctor.
Relationships: The Doctor & Missy (Doctor Who), The Doctor & Yasmin Khan, The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor & Missy, Thirteenth Doctor/Missy
Comments: 12
Kudos: 58





	1. Chapter 1

“If there’s one person in the whole universe . . . who enjoys a systems hijack of their ship, I'd definitely like to meet them.”

The console room was filled with smoke and the Doctor had an immense headache both by being thrown around by the erratic piloting and from the emergency alarm the TARDIS was emitting. The TARDIS wheezed and groaned as she attempted to materialize. One of the gears on the console sparked and started to smoke. A metal hose exploded and hissed. The TARDIS landed with a heavy clang and fire erupted from the console. The Doctor ducked when she heard a dangerous cracking sound. One of the crystal pillars broke and collapsed with a deafening crash, missing her by a hair.

The Doctor’s ears rung as she counted to ten and waited. Ten seconds passed. All was still. Coughing, she made a vain attempt at waving away the smoke and retrieved a fire extinguisher, then promptly put out the fire on the console. The TARDIS gave several beeps that sounded like fading heartbeats. Concerned, the Doctor frowned and stashed the fire extinguisher away. 

“You sound sick,” she murmured and softly ran her fingers over the console. “Not surprising, given what just happened. Do you know where we are?”

In response, the TARDIS attempted to dematerialize, but stalled and backfired. The beeping sound returned. Alarmed, the Doctor made a shushing sound and patted the console. 

“It’s all right, it’s all right. We’ll figure this out. Let’s just take a moment and get our bearings, eh?”

Three scanners lit up, showing hazy images accompanied by static. The Doctor surveyed scanners for a moment and pulled on different switches in an attempt to get the images into focus, but to no avail. 

“Or not. Is it dangerous out there?”

The TARDIS made an indecisive warbling sound. Slowly, the Doctor made her way around the console, side-stepping the broken pillar, and headed towards the door. Crystal shards crunched beneath her boots and the door swung open before she could reach it, sending in a welcome blast of fresh air and a shaft of sunlight. The Doctor stood at the doorway and inhaled deeply. 

“Smells like . . . Dyffryn Gardens? No, not Dyffryn Gardens. It’s close, but no, not exact. What do you think? Should I have a look around? Find out what brought us here?”

The TARDIS beeped and hummed softly. The Doctor waited a moment for any warning signs and then stepped outside.

It appeared she had been spirited away to paradise. Birds chirped softly and a fountain burbled gently nearby. The sky was so blue it made her eyes ache, but the heat from the sun felt somehow off. She passed by stone urns overflowing with velvety pink roses and moss-covered Roman columns. The air smelled sweet and clean, but the violent journey had shaken her and she walked through the peaceful garden on edge, waiting for something to jump out from behind the trimmed hedges. 

Out of curiosity, she plucked a petal off a rose and popped it in her mouth. She chewed thoughtfully, but ingesting the petal didn’t help her ascertain her location. It did, however, help her realize that the petal, along with the fountain and birdsong and shrubbery, were not organic. Wherever she was, whatever she was in was artificially constructed from codes and data lines.

“What took you so long?” asked a familiar, impatient voice. “I thought you were always ready to jump at the chance to helps someone, but I’ve been sending you distress signals for ages and you’ve roundly ignored them. What’s a girl got to do to get your attention, Doctor?”

The Doctor froze and, for a moment, the sound of her heats beating in her ears drowned everything else out. She didn’t hear the swish of heavy skirts or the click of heeled boots on the stone pavement, but she did feel a hand reach for hers. She reacted as though she had been scalded and whirled around, taking several stumbling steps back when her eyes met the eyes of her old enemy, the one she had tried so hard to turn good.

Missy grinned at her with apparent amusement and looked her up and down. “Well, well, look at you. Got an upgrade, I see. Shame it didn’t cure you of your lack of fashion sense. Did you get those sorry rags from a charity shop?”

The Doctor took several deep breaths and attempted to compose herself, but couldn’t quite reach a level of calmness that would’ve allowed her to speak clearly. Pieces started clicking into place. The brutal journey, the TARDIS trying to hold itself together as it broke apart, the artificiality of the garden. She was in a virtual reality within a matrix data slice. 

Missy tilted her head inquisitively. “Lost for words, are you?”

“You can’t be here!” the Doctor shouted. “No, wait, I can’t be here. I shouldn’t be here. Neither of us should. Why am I here? Did you hijack my TARDIS?”

“Shh, there’s no need to shout. And I didn’t _hijack_ your ancient little ship. Just give it a proper push in the right direction.”

Calm. She needed to be calm. However she'd gotten here didn’t matter. She’d escaped from other, more harrowing places. She could escape from this place as well. She just needed to fight the monsters just as she always did.

“You can’t be here because I saw you. You’re no longer you,” the Doctor repeated slowly, her tone much calmer. “Or are you a copy? Is that how you keep cheating death? By uploading copies of yourself and body snatching?”

“One must always have contingency plans in place, don’t you think? It’s not like I can trust anybody. I certainly couldn’t trust myself. As for body snatching---” Missy rolled her eyes. “---it’s been years since I’ve done that. Can’t you let it go?”

The Doctor shook her angrily head. “No, no, you killed my friend. Shrank him and took over his identity.”

Missy’s eyes sparkled with interest. “Did I now? Fascinating. So my murder-suicide plan didn’t come to fruition. Wonderful news.”

The Doctor felt the wind go out of her sails. “Your . . . Your what?”

“While you were off saving the day and battling Cybermen, I was off having a wee chat with myself that ended with a mutual backstabbing. I stabbed him, he tried to inhibit my ability to regenerate. Just a normal Saturday.” Smiling radiantly, Missy twirled prettily and felt quite pleased with the knowledge that she had cheated death again. Now she needn’t worry about what would happen to the matrix data slice she was currently inhabiting. 

To say the Doctor was confused was an understatement.

“I don’t understand. Why would you do that to yourself?”

Missy’s smile faded to a frown. Without a word, she walked away. She didn’t have to turn around to know that the Doctor was following her. She would always be able to recognize the Doctor’s footfalls. 

“Missy, why?”

She’d missed hearing the Doctor say her name. It didn’t matter that the voice was different. The Doctor could always make her name sound like the most beautiful sound in the world.

“It’s a long and boring story, Doctor,” she said in a dismissive tone. 

“I have time for long and boring.”

Missy peeked coyly over her shoulder. “Do you have time for me?”

She wanted to hear the Doctor say, “Always”, in that new and delightful voice, but instead, all she got was a pinched frown and an impatient nod. Sighing dramatically, she led the Doctor to a little shaded alcove where a wicker table and two chairs were waiting for them. The table was set for tea with a delicate bone china set and a tiered stand stacked with dainty scones and biscuits.

“Please, have a seat.”

Missy arranged her skirts so they fell gracefully over her knees and perched delicately on her seat. She waited for the Doctor to sit, then poured her a cup of fragrant rose tea. With a small pair of silver tongs, she placed a generous selection of scones and biscuits on the Doctor’s plate. The Doctor eyed them suspiciously and kept her hands on her knees.

Missy exhaled sharply with exasperation. “They’re not pomegranate seeds. I don’t intend to trap you here. Put some apricot jam on the scones and help yourself to sugar and milk.”

The Doctor dumped several sugar cubes in her tea and stirred it slowly. “Why are you stalling?”

Missy eyed her over the rim of her teacup. “I have no idea what you mean.”

The Doctor took a bite out of one of the scones. It tasted like vanilla with an aftertaste of artifice. “You said you stabbed yourself and he tried to inhibit you from regenerating. Why?”

Missy’s teacup clinked softly when she placed it back on the saucer. Her eyes studied the Doctor’s new face. It was prettier whereas the last face had been more handsome and distinguished, but she still found it charming and wondered what the story was behind that earring The Doctor wore. What sort of adventures had she had? What worlds had she managed to save? What did she look like when she smiled? 

“I wanted to stand with you.” 

The Doctor opened her mouth to speak and Missy raised a hand to silence her. 

“Now, don’t be rude. Wait for mummy to finish talking.” Playing for time, Missy took another sip of her tea. “I wanted to make up for what I had done, but I didn’t want to admit that I had changed, so I left you. It was a mistake because I knew you’d never make it out without me, so I made up my mind to go back and find you. I did so hate you, Doctor, for reforming me. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to realize everything that fundamentally made you who you were was slowly disappearing? Can you imagine it? I suppose for you, it would be as if you one day realized you now longer had any compassion for all the little pets that find their way into your TARDIS. Oh, but I guess it doesn’t matter now. I knew you wouldn’t make it out without me, you clearly didn’t, and here we are.”

The Doctor searched Missy’s face, looking for signs that she was lying. Missy’s eyes were honest. Whatever righteous anger she’d developed toward her faded to a flicker. 

“I never knew,” she said, her voice faint with shock. “But I still don’t understand. If you had changed and had meant to be good, what made you change back?”

“I take it I’m not so good anymore,” Missy said and took another sip of her tea.

The Doctor leaned forward with a pained expression. “You destroyed Gallifrey.”

This revelation caused Missy to feel both exceptionally pleased and just a little bit ill. “I’ve always known that I could,” she said, injecting as much pride into her voice as she could. “I’m sure my future self has already told you why I did it. Care to share the reason with me?”

Suddenly, the Doctor felt sick. She leaned back and stared down at her hands. Her knuckles were white, the skin straining at the bone as she gripped the fabric of her trousers. Memories from her time in The Matrix came flooding back. She’d fought and won and all the really mattered was who she was now and the promises she had made, but that battle had left her scarred. 

“Now you’re the one who’s stalling.”

She couldn’t talk about it. Not yet. Talking about it would force her to face that reality and reopen all those wounds. But she could share it.

“Can I show you?”

Missy leaned forward. “Show me.”

The Doctor took a deep breath, pressed her fingertips to Missy’s temples, and closed her eyes.

_Contact._


	2. Chapter 2

The images were brief, but left a profound impact in Missy’s mind. She saw her future self, mad and deranged and reveling in the destruction, and felt strangely comforted. That was who she was and who she’d always be. Though the crackling ruins of the Citadel had caused the Doctor to despair, Missy immediately understood why it had been necessary as soon as she saw what the Doctor had seen in the Matrix.

The memories she cherished the most all involved her best, most beloved friend. Her only friend. Those memories of the time they had spent as children were among her fondest ones, but none of those faces she’d seen belonged to the one she remembered. There’d been a life before her. Multiple lives. How many years were in dozens of lifetimes? 

At once, she felt a familiar surge of rage, hatred, jealousy, and indignation. The urge to destroy that she’d worked so hard to temper down boiled within her hearts. How could the Doctor expect her to be unhappy that her future incarnation had destroyed Gallifrey after all she’d endured? All those lives full of torture and cruelty and pain. Every Time Lord owed their existence to the Doctor, including herself. That bit of genetic material, stolen out of her Doctor, was part of her genetic code. The bit that made Missy special was all because of her. And how she loathed it now. How she wanted to cut herself up and tear and burn that bit of material out of her DNA and be a Time Lady no more.

The Doctor broke contact and studied Missy’s face. The rigid calmness she saw unnerved her, but she relaxed a little when Missy picked up her teacup again.

“Are there none left?” 

“No . . . no, I don’t think so.”

“Good.”

Missy took a sip of her tea, pointedly ignoring the Doctor’s sharp gasp. The chinaware rattled as the Doctor stood up suddenly, the wicker chair falling behind her with a clatter.

“There’s nobody left!” cried the Doctor. “Nobody, not even the children. You desecrated the bodies of our people, turned them into Cybermen, and it doesn’t bother you? Not even a little bit?”

Missy set down her teacup, pushed back her chair, and gracefully stood up. “I can say with great certainty that it does not,” she replied coldly. 

The Doctor felt stricken. Learning the truth about herself had been horrifying and she’d expected the compassion that Missy had developed to respond to what she’d shown her, but that was the problem, wasn’t it? If she’d tried harder with Missy, the Master wouldn’t have gone back to his former ways. 

“I failed you. I couldn’t change you. I didn’t try hard enough and I didn’t put in all the work I should have. I’m so sorry.”

Missy laughed, hating the way her hearts clenched when the Doctor gave her that little apology. At once, she hated ever calling her out here. She hated that ashen face, those wet eyes, the tremor in her voice, and that sincere conviction she had in believing she was somehow at fault for the ruins of Gallifrey. 

“Right, of course. Everything is always about you.” Chuckling, she refilled her tea cup, took another sip, and started to walk around the table. “After all, you are the chosen one. The fate of all of time and space hinges on you and whatever little pets you pick up along the way. The sainted ‘Timeless Child’. The martyr who helped usher in the era of the Time Lords. I should bow down to you, shouldn’t I?” Missy stopped a foot away from the Doctor, curtsied gracefully, and then held her teacup aloft. “A toast to my savior, the Doctor!” Grinning maniacally, she finished her tea, arched her arm back, and threw the cup past the Doctor’s shoulder at one of the concrete columns. “Always the perfect one, aren’t you? Always the good one. The _special_ one! They always called you a failure and said you’d never amount to anything, but look at you now with all that _knowledge_ of who you are. You’re more important and special than all of us mere Time Lords. A round of applause for you.” Clapping her hands, she twirled and grabbed the Doctor’s tea cup, then smashed it at her feet. Next, the plate of sweets. The sugar bowl. The creamer. The tiered stand. She surveyed the damage with delight and reached for the tea pot. She lost her grip on it briefly and tea spilled, staining the table cloth and burning her hand. 

“Stop it!” the Doctor cried and grabbed Missy, wrestling her away from the table. “Just stop it, Missy! Look, you’ve hurt yourself.” Concerned, she examined the burn mark on her hand and wished she had something to heal it. “Why is it always destruction with you? Why can’t you ever stop?”

Missy yanked her hand away and grabbed the Doctor’s coat, forcing her to come close. “Why would I stop when it feels so good?” she hissed.

The Doctor exhaled sharply and grabbed her wrists. “I know you. I know destruction never feels good for long. Destroying Gallifrey didn’t temper your rage. One day, it’ll burn you away. I don’t want that to happen to you. Please, I just want to know how to help you.”

“Help me? Please! So I can be a do-gooder like you? What has being good gotten you anyway? You thought you’d only been forced to regenerate once, but now you can’t even count how many regenerations you’ve had. You saved our planet from the Time War and for what? The children? Some of who would have been made Time Lords, using what had been taken from you.” Missy’s breath caught in her throat. “That’s what they’ll always do to you, Doctor. They’ll always use you and you’ll always go along with what they want if it means saving the children. That’s why they had to go. All of them. Even the ones who weren’t Time Lords because what was stopping the general masses from abducting you and subjecting you to more torture to take back the ability to regenerate?”

The Doctor’s expression softened. Slowly, she reached up to cup Missy’s face and gently swiped away the tears falling down her cheek. Missy glared at her defiantly, but underneath those hard words and cold eyes, the Doctor saw an unfathomable sorrow. She suddenly remembered how the Master had looked at her at times with an impalpable sadness and how he’d laughed when she’d asked him why he’d leveled Gallifrey. All that hysterical giddiness was just a defense mechanism. She couldn’t forgive what he had done, but she felt she could understand his thought process a little better.

“I can’t forgive what was done to me,” said the Doctor. “But it has no bearing on what I’ll do from now on. It doesn’t change the promise that my name carries.”

“I felt your rage,” countered Missy. “All that burning betrayal and doubt and hatred. You are an idiot, Doctor, if you think this knowledge of yourself hasn’t changed you.”

The Doctor smiled sadly. “I am an idiot, aren’t I?”

“You are.” Missy inhaled sharply. “But you’re _my_ idiot.” She pressed a hand against the Doctor’s cheek and sighed. “Look what they’ve done to my poor idiot.”

The Doctor leaned into Missy's hand and sighed softly. Missy knew her in ways her companions never could. She had to be careful around her friends to make sure they felt safe around her and, though she cared for them deeply and would die for them, she couldn't allow herself to be vulnerable around them the way she could with Missy. 

“Do you think . . . Would it have made you go mad? Learning about my past? I don’t, I’m not trying to make this about myself as you said. I didn’t have an opportunity to ask you. No, actually, I didn’t want to ask you. I didn’t want to understand. I’m still so angry with you. Not you, here and now, but---”

Missy silenced her with a shush and a finger pressed to her lips. “You talk too much.” She released the Doctor’s coat and tugged on it to straighten it out, then turned her attention to the Doctor’s hair and smoothed it down. “Now, is that your arrogance speaking? Do you honestly think I went ‘mad from the revelation’ and that undid all the good you tried to do for me?”

“I don’t mean to be arrogant. I just want to understand you."

“Why don’t you ask me? That is, my current self. We are the same person after all.”

The Doctor grimaced. It wouldn’t be easy talking to the Master. Not while he still wore O’s face and was out there gallivanting with the Cybermen. The Master was always the same person, no matter how many times they changed faces, but being in Missy’s presence was miles better than being in the Master’s presence. 

But she didn’t want to say that and somehow offend Missy, so she changed the topic. “Why do you keep touching my hair?”

“Oh love, it’s a mess!” Missy exclaimed. “Haven’t you got a hairbrush in your TARDIS?”

“Loads! My mate Yaz sometimes brushes it for me. She braided it one time too. She always does her hair in all these different twisty loops and styles and I wanted a braid like hers, but it didn’t turn out exactly the same because my hair isn’t as long as hers. Do you think I should grow it out? But having long hair’s tricky, isn’t it? How do you manage yours?”

Missy felt a stab of jealousy as she curled a strand of the Doctor’s hair around her finger and yanked on it slightly, then smiled when the Doctor winced. “Sorry. Just trying to pull a knot out. So you’ve already got more pets.”

“They’re not pets, Missy, they’re my friends.” The Doctor’s eyes lit up and she took Missy’s hands in hers. “Do you want to meet them? They’re great people. There’s Yaz, who’s very brave and loyal, and Ryan, who always tries his hardest when things go wrong, and Graham, who’s got a great heart.”

Missy stared down at their interlocked hands. “Are we back to being friends then?”

“We’ve always been friends,” the Doctor replied with a bright smile. “Imagine you, me, and my fam. Think of the adventures we’d have!”

This was what she had wanted for so long. The acknowledgement that they were friends. Even after all the history between them, all the backstabbing and the homicidal cries for attention, they were still friends. Missy looked up to meet the Doctor’s hopeful gaze. Her smile made her heartbeats quicken. She hated the Doctor so much, but loved her even more. She promised herself to treasure the memory of that smile no matter what happened next. 

“You’re delusional.”

“Am I?”

“You are. What would you even do with two of me? You couldn’t handle it last time.”

“Well, maybe I could now. I’d be able to talk to you, the current you, as long as you’re by my side. I could fix everything. Make you see reason. I’d do better this time. Oh! We would be so good together, the three of us! Learning to trust each other again, working together. I know your mind. All that knowledge and intelligence in that beautiful head of yours. We could do so much good. Please, won’t you let me try again?”

The Doctor glowed with hope as she babbled on and imagined an impossible future where she and her friends could all get along. In the back of her mind, she knew it could never happen. It had cost her a lot to reform Missy and she’d still failed. She couldn’t bear to think what it would cost her to attempt to reform the Master and nor did she want to try. Selfishly, she knew the real reason she wanted Missy back was because she’d come so close to doing the right thing. Missy, with all her cleverness, could help her deal with the Master. All she needed was a second chance.

For her part, Missy felt rather insulted at the implication that she still needed to be fixed. She hated how the Doctor looked at her now like some little gadget that needed a few more pegs and gears to be operational again. She almost called her out on it, but time was running out and she needed to use what little she had left wisely. 

“There’s cowardice in cruelty, you know. It’s a lot easier to stomp on the flowers than go around them. That’s why I hated your attempts to reform me so much. It was so difficult to face my cruelty. It’s easier to run away from it.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Missy linked arms with the Doctor and walked her towards her TARDIS. “Because I want you to keep that in mind when you next see me. I don’t expect you to forgive my present self. He wouldn’t want your pity and forgiveness anyway. I just want you to understand.” At the TARDIS door, Missy paused and peered inside. “You’ve certainly made a mess of things coming here.”

“That wasn’t me, that was you! You know the TARDIS isn’t meant to be compressed small enough to fit into a matrix data slice.”

“Well, at least the journey back will be easy.”

The Doctor nodded, but when Missy unlinked their arms, she reached for her hand again and gave it a kiss. Missy tightened her grip on the hand and pulled the Doctor forward. She wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her in so close that she could almost hear her heartbeats quickening. Without a word, she gave her a long, sweet kiss, hoping to convey all that had been left unsaid. She pulled away and laughed when she caught sight of the Doctor’s bright pink cheeks and startled eyes. She almost made a joke about her having never been kissed in this body yet, but decided against it when she saw the Doctor’s eyes filling with tears.

“Missy, I---”

“Oh, don’t start. Off you go now.” Missy grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her around. “Into your TARDIS. Back to your pets. Back to saving that big, thankless universe. Just spare me a thought every now and then, all right?”

The Doctor laughed softly. “You know most of my thoughts already revolve around you.”

The TARDIS hummed as the Doctor stepped inside. She’d done some repairs while the Doctor had been away and was eager to leave, but the Doctor hesitated. The TARDIS swung the door shut with a decisive bang. Surprised, the Doctor turned and peered through the windows. Missy stood just outside. The garden around her rumbled and started to break off piece by piece. 

“It’s powering down. No. Why didn’t I realize---?”

The TARDIS’s engines engaged and the Doctor panicked. 

“Wait! Please, wait!”

She rushed over to the console, tripping over a downed wire and skinning her legs on the crushed crystals. Frantically, she pulled on levers in a vain attempt to stop the TARDIS from taking flight, but the TARDIS overrode her efforts. Gasping, she rushed back to the door and pulled on it.

“Missy!” she called out. “You have to leave! Missy!”

Missy didn’t panic. She knew the matrix data slice would power down eventually, just as the Nethersphere had. That’s why she’d called the Doctor, hoping they’d be able to get her out, but there was no need now. Shame her final memory as herself had to be one of the Doctor’s tear-stained face. She smiled at the Doctor and blew her a kiss just as the TARDIS dematerialized, leaving her alone in the fading remnants of her paradise.


	3. Chapter 3

A loud _crunch_ accompanied by the TARDIS’s materialization sound jolted Yaz awake. She’d fallen asleep on the sofa with the television on again. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she looked around, but didn’t see either her parents or her sister standing around the blue box that was occupying the place where the dining table had once stood and figured they must have gone out. Yawning, she pulled her blanket around herself and surveyed the damage. The dining room table had been obliterated by the TARDIS landing on top of it, but Yaz wasn’t too upset about it. The Doctor would be able to fix it. She could fix anything.

“Doctor, do you know you’ve landed in my flat?” 

Seconds ticked by without a response. Yaz frowned and pulled on one of the TARDIS doors, but found it locked. She knocked and peered through the windows.

“Doctor? Are you in there?”

Feeling uneasy due to the Doctor’s unresponsiveness, Yaz rushed to the kitchen drawer where her family kept all the keys and pulled out her set of house keys. Finding the key the Doctor had given her, she unlocked the TARDIS door and marched inside, but stopped short when she caught sight of the damaged console room. Parts of the console itself were blackened and melted. One of the crystal pillars had broken off and sitting on the floor, leaning against it, was the Doctor.

“Are you all right?” Yaz asked as she rushed towards her. “What’s happened to you?”

The Doctor’s expression was like stone. She stared off in the distance with a glassy gaze, seeing something Yaz couldn’t see. Feeling rather spooked, Yaz slipped the blanket off and wrapped it around the Doctor’s shoulders, then squeezed one of her hands. 

“You know I don’t like it when you go quiet. Please, can you tell me what’s wrong?”

Instinctively, the Doctor squeezed her hand back and blinked. For an instant, a dizzying sense of hope rushed through her hearts and she turned, half-pleading and half-wishing that Missy had managed to find her way in. Disappointment clouded her features when she saw that the hand holding hers didn’t belong to Missy and she instantly felt terrible for momentarily being disappointed by Yaz’s presence.

“Yaz? What are you doing here?” she asked, puzzled.

“You, you landed in my flat. I let myself in with my key. Why don’t you come inside? Here.” 

Yaz wrapped her free arm around the Doctor’s waist and helped her up, then led her inside. The Doctor followed her silently and sat down on the sofa, pulling the blanket tightly around herself. Yaz shut off the television and sat beside her.

“Do you want to talk?”

“No. It doesn’t matter anyway. You wouldn’t understand.”

Stung, Yaz leaned back. She hated when the Doctor shut her out, shut them all out, and increased the distance between them. She appreciated that there were a lot of difficult topics that she didn’t want to talk about, but there had to be a reason the Doctor had landed right in the middle of her flat. It couldn’t be a coincidence. So she wasn’t ready to talk now. That was fine, but Yaz wasn’t letting her leave until she did.

“Do you want a cuppa?”

The Doctor shook her head. Her mind drifted back to Missy, to that delicate tea service she had smashed, and the burn mark on her hand. She wished she’d been able to at least press something cold against that burn. She wished she'd been able to override the TARDIS and had gone back for her. She'd angrily ranted and raved at her poor ship when all the TARDIS had wanted to do was take her someplace safe. Guilt crushed her like a boulder then. She should've apologized to the TARDIS before going with Yaz.

Yaz studied the Doctor carefully, wondering what she should say next. 

“A biscuit then?”

She was quite relieved when the Doctor nodded and quickly walked over to the kitchen. Yaz always kept a package of custard creams in the very back of the pantry. She knew they were the Doctor’s favorite and always wanted to have them available for her whenever she dropped by. 

“Here,” she said and proffered the biscuit packet.

“Thank you,” the Doctor said and opened the packet. She took two out and held one out for Yaz. 

Yaz shook her head. “Do you want to watch some telly?” 

“Okay. Are you sure you don’t want a biscuit?”

Yaz switched the television back on. “No, it’s fine. I actually keep them here for you.”

“You do?” the Doctor asked, feeling touched by Yaz’s thoughtfulness. 

“Yeah, I know they’re your favorite, so I always make sure I pick some up whenever I’m out. Do you want anything to drink? It doesn’t have to be tea. Some water or coffee?”

The Doctor considered these choices for a moment. “The last time I came here, you served me some very tasty, very milky tea. Do you have that?”

“Doodh pati?”

“Yes, doodh pati chai!” the Doctor exclaimed and snapped her fingers. “Oh, that was excellent tea. Can I have some of that?”

Yaz smiled and stood up. “Definitely. Just give me some time to make it.”

“Can I help?”

“If you want, yeah.”

Looking a bit more like herself, the Doctor stood up and dropped the blanket on the sofa next to the half-eaten packet of biscuits. Yaz pulled the tea and sugar canisters out of a cabinet, then took out a saucepan, some measuring cups, and a sieve. 

“Can you get the milk?”

“Got it.” The Doctor opened the refrigerator and took a glass bottle of milk out. “Next?”

“Next measure out one and a half cups of water and one cup of milk and pour it in the saucepan. Place the saucepan over the stove on high heat and stir.”

Yaz thought there was something very sweet about how the Doctor methodically measured out the ingredients with such an intense look of concentration. She listened to her mumble to herself as she placed the saucepan on the stove, then opened a drawer to pull out a spoon and started to stir.

“Do we put the tea in now?”

“When it starts to boil.”

The Doctor hummed to herself as she stirred and suddenly realized where her TARDIS had landed. “Oh! Did I break your kitchen table?”

“Yeah, but it’s fine. I know you’ll fix it.”

“But what if I can’t?”

“I know you can. You’re good at fixing everything.”

The Doctor sighed. “No, not everything.”

“But you’re so clever! I’m sure you could fix just about everything if you had enough time.”

The Doctor stared at the little bubbles forming at the edges of the saucepan. It wouldn’t be long now before the water and milk started to boil. “I once tried to fix my friend.”

Yaz reached for the kitchen sponge, then scrubbed at an imaginary stain on the kitchen counter. “What happened?” she asked, trying her best to be nonchalant. 

“It didn’t take. I saw her today. I think it was today. I didn’t think I’d see her again, but she’d been calling out to me. I guess I’d been too busy or maybe I knew and wanted to ignore her. I was angry at her. And him. I was angry at both of them. It was more his fault than hers, but they’re the same person, so of course I was angry at both.”

Yaz felt deeply confused as she sometimes did whenever the Doctor went on a tangent, but she didn’t ask for clarification. The Doctor was finally sharing something with her and she didn’t want to interrupt.

“I asked them for help,” the Doctor continued. “People were going to die and I knew I wouldn’t be able to help them all by myself. They both left me.” She stopped stirring, remembering Missy’s face. “But she tried to come back and I never knew. But we talked a lot and she gave me some new perspective on why he’d gone on to destroy Gallifrey.”

Yaz’s eyes widened as comprehension dawned on her. “You’re talking about the Master?”

The Doctor hesitated. The milk and water were slowly coming to a boil. “Yes, the Master. The Mistress. She called herself Missy then, for short.”

Yaz had so many more questions now. When the Doctor had returned to them after that doomed adventure on Gallifrey, she’d told them a little more about her species. How they could regenerate when close to death and how they didn’t really have notions of gender the way humans did. How she and the Master had been friends for so long and enemies for even longer than any of them could imagine. She remembered how the Doctor had told her on their first encounter that she’d been a man. So the Master had been a woman before then? But how did that even work? Was it possible to meet all of one’s past regenerations? 

“Yaz.” The Doctor looked up from the saucepan and waited for Yaz to stop pretending she was cleaning. “I know I haven’t been honest with you or Ryan or Graham. I call you fam, but I don’t always act like I trust you the way one would trust a family. I’m sorry for that.”

Yaz shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, unsure of what to say. She'd been expecting the Doctor to tell her why the TARDIS was such a mess and how she'd gotten those scrapes on her legs, not an apology.

“It’s okay, Doctor.”

“It isn’t, Yaz. I know it isn’t and I know I sometimes act very rude towards you three. Part of it is the social awkwardness aspect. Sometimes I really don’t know what to say because there’s no sufficiently adequate word. Other times I get too uncomfortable and just change the subject or walk away. I realize it’s wrong of me, but there’s just so much I don’t want to dredge up. There are so many memories in my head that sometimes I feel like I’m just going to collapse under the weight of them all. I don’t want to burden any of you with that.”

“You couldn’t ever be a burden.”

The Doctor smiled sadly and looked back down at the saucepan. “It’s boiling now.”

Yaz measured out the tea and poured it in the saucepan. “Let it simmer. Keep stirring for a bit.”

The Doctor turned down the heat and stirred. “What the Master did was wrong. Wrong and evil and I don’t think I can forgive him. But Missy helped me understand why he did what he did. And you know what I did?”

“What?”

“I suggested she come with me. I suddenly got it into my head that I could make her good again. We could travel together, see the stars. I’ve always wanted that.”

“She didn’t want to come?”

“She couldn’t, but if I’d had more time, I could have gotten her to come with me. I could’ve gotten her out.”

Her eyes suddenly felt hot and the Doctor blinked. To her horror, she felt a tear track down her face and fall right into the saucepan. Quickly, she wiped her face with her sleeve, sniffled, and gulped down the tears. She refused to cry in front of Yaz and give her something else to worry about.

“Now, is this done? I feel like I’ve been stirring for ages. You know, I think I could build something in the TARDIS to make this much faster. Imagine that! We could have chai whenever we wanted with the push of a button. I think I can put it next to the custard cream dispenser. I have to repair the TARDIS anyway. Would your family mind it much if I left her there for now? The repairs will take a while and I promise I’ll fix the table as soon as . . . I’m . . . Yaz?”

The Doctor trailed off when she caught sight of Yaz’s face. She’d seen that look only once before and hoped she’d never see it again. Her first instinct was to turn away and give Yaz privacy, but hadn't she just apologized for not always acting in a socially appropriate manner? 

“Don’t cry,” she pleaded. “Please Yaz, whatever I did, I’m sorry. I can fix the table now, if you want.”

“It’s not the table.” Yaz grabbed a tea towel and quickly scrubbed her face clean. “It’s just that I wish you weren’t so sad and trying so hard to hide it. You shouldn’t feel like you have to do that. Do you really trust me?”

“I do!”

“Then trust me when I say this. You are not a burden. You’re not, okay? You can trust me with your feelings. I won’t belittle you or run away or whatever it is you think I’m going to do and don’t let any little voices in the back of your head tell you I will because I’m right here telling you I won’t.” Yaz dropped the tea towel on the counter and quickly wrapped her arms around the Doctor, pulling her in for a tight hug. She was half afraid the Doctor would decide to leave right then and there like a spooked woodland creature. “I won’t, okay? Believe me.”

Sighing, the Doctor relaxed in Yaz’s arms and slowly, somewhat awkwardly, hugged her back. Doubts were ever present in her mind, but Yaz’s assurances helped calm them for now. How she’d missed hugging. Why didn’t she do it more often? But how long did hugs last again? She was about to ask Yaz when she heard her gasp, “The tea!”

The tea had boiled over. The two released each other at the same time and the Doctor removed the saucepan from the heat just as Yaz turned off the stove. Slowly, the Doctor set the saucepan on a trivet and she and Yaz peered at the remainder of the scalded tea.

“Do you think it’ll still taste good?” asked Yaz.

“Oh yes,” said the Doctor confidently. She measured out a cup full of sugar and dumped it in the tea. “There! Smells better already.”

Laughing, Yaz took out two mugs, strained the tea, and poured an even amount in each mug. “Let’s give them time to cool. Wanna watch some bad telly in the meantime?”

“Yeah, I think I could use some bad telly today.”

Yaz switched the TV back on and left it on some talk show, then sat down on the sofa next to the Doctor, who scooted closer towards her. Yaz unfurled the blanket and wrapped it around herself and the Doctor. The Doctor smiled and rested her head on Yaz’s shoulder. 

“Cozy?” asked Yaz.”

“Yeah,” the Doctor replied and yawned. “Sorry. I didn’t realize I was so tired.”

“Go ahead and take a nap. I’ll reheat your tea later.”

Yawning again, The Doctor straightened up to untie her boots, kicked them off, and curled up on the sofa with her head on Yaz’s lap. Her eyelids fluttered shut and she fell asleep to Yaz’s voice telling her to have sweet dreams.

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! <3


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